[conradwa]

Nothing wrong with an umbrella approach - I'd argue it's likely that Meetup cares a lot more about retention and engagement, and cross-selling other high-quality events, than any type of acquisition at this point. Users bring in other users through word of mouth is a pretty compelling approach.

That being said, if they wanted to open up their new user acquisition efforts on mobile they could let users brand and launch their own applications in addition to their main app.

They could do it in the same way you're becoming more able to customize a meetup landing page now, and tuck promotion of other similar events, or even the main meetup app in the background.

This type of approach could appeal to organizer who really cares about their own brand. Think large conferences and related topics, who'd love to use a Meetup backend, but need to differentiate their brand.

On the search point would you agree that someone searching for "soccer" in the iOS store would be interested in an app dedicated to doing soccer in person?